


Layered

by entanglednow



Category: Bedlam (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-20
Updated: 2011-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jed's been asked a lot of question. He still doesn't have all the answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Layered

  
Ryan offers Jed a bottle of beer over the back of the couch. It's already open, which tells him Ryan doesn't expect him to say no. He decides not to be disappointing, takes it with a nod and swallows a third of it in one go.

Ryan settles next to him.

"Where's Kate?" Jed asks.

Ryan makes a noise around a mouthful of beer and then swallows. "I'm not sure, she was very harassed when she left. I didn't get a chance to ask."

Jed wonders briefly if he should go after her, or at least try and find out where she is. But he knows her well enough to realise there's only so much of that she'll put up with, before she starts demanding answers, and he doesn't have any to give her - at least not yet.

Ryan's pulling one leg up under him on the sofa, and Jed can feel him working himself up to say something. Questions working their way through his head, into the _right_ words. He's seen it often enough before.

"This thing you can do, something like psychometry, which is -"

"I know what psychometry is," Jed says quietly, not with any heat though. It's amazing how many people are unwilling to diagnose you without throwing in a few big words, just to make everything sound more interesting. And he'd had a lot of diagnoses over the years. Until he stopped talking at least. "It's more complicated than that."

Ryan pulls his bottle in close, holds it in both hands. "I just thought - well, it's the sort of thing you'd try and use, surely? To help people, I mean. All the things which get left unfinished when people die, and the ones - the dead - who...stick around. Though that makes it sound a little bit like some sort of bad, supernatural drama, the kind that they put on really late when they've run out of repeats."

Jed just looks at him for a second.

"That came out completely wrong," Ryan says, an apology of sorts.

"No, I know what you mean, it's just...it's not as easy as that. It's not -" Jed tries to think about it and not think about it at the same time. "It's not easy, it's like getting slapped in the face with it, not cracking a door and having a quick look. I don't always have a choice when it happens."

Ryan's mouth goes thin, a wince of sympathy.

"But that's what you do anyway. What you decided to do?"

Jed shifts on the couch. "It's hard to ignore."

"So you just show up when there's trouble?"

"I don't know -" Jed starts, then looks at the tilt of Ryan's head, the little frown that seems to be trying so hard to understand. "Something like that," he finishes when he can't find a better way to explain it.

"And having everyone think -" Ryan seems to realise he's going somewhere insensitive, tries to drag the words back, or pretend he's phrased it in some better way. "I mean, that couldn't have been easy."

Jed nods. "Yeah, I would have skipped that part if I could."

He finishes his beer in the silence that hangs after that.

"It doesn't exactly make me friends," he says at last. "Most of this stuff, people don't want to know it. People stop touching, they stop coming close enough in case I see something, someone. They don't want to know."

Ryan's watching him sideways but Jed doesn't turn his head and meet his eyes. You get sick of the pity after a while, of other people just not getting it. Or not believing it.

Ryan sets his beer bottle on the table. "I don't have any skeletons, not really, not anything bad. I've got no problem with you touching me if you want -" The half-smile he's wearing turns into a frown. "And that came out a little more wrong than I meant.

"I know what you meant," Jed manages a smile of his own. "I appreciate it."


End file.
